Danger zones: Not even the experts could recoup the costs of this Qld house

News Corp Australia Network

Interiors experty Wendy Moore and landscaper Dennis Scott on set in Clermont. Foxtel.

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Not even a drastic makeover by the Selling Houses Australia team was enough to dig this house in a Queensland mining town out from its money pit.

Located in Clermont, the house was bought for $285,000 during the mining boom and sold for $225,000 late last year.

The property was featured in episode one of the new season of the hit Foxtel show, with real estate expert Andrew Winter describing it as a “real estate tragedy”.

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This Clermont house was described as a “real estate tragedy”

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At the time of filming, it was owned by Paige and her fiance Brandan, who bought the three bedroom house with a friend back in 2009.

Paige later bought the friend out but she never lived in what she called the “bachelor pad of Clermont”.

Paige with Selling Houses Australia host Andrew Winter

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After several price drops, the couple called in the experts after spending the better part of a decade trying to off-load their “liability”.

“When the mining industry is good, real estate is good,” Winter said. “When it is bad, real estate is bad.”

The kitchen after the makeover

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The couple tipped in $30,000 for the makeover, which completely transformed the “sad house”.

They hoped to sell for $260,000 but after sitting on the market for over a year, albeit with a tenant in place, the house had no bites until September last year, with the couple taking an $80,000 hit to the hip pocket.

Clermont did not make the national top 30 ‘no-go zones’ list by DSR Data, but analyst Jeremy Sheppard said that did not mean it was not a risky investment market.

“We excluded suburbs where the data available was rather threadbare,” he said.

“But based on what data we do have, I would say it would be one to avoid for an investor.”

Six Queensland locations were deemed ‘no-go zones’ in the national top 30 list, and they ranged from predictable mining towns to some of the hottest beach and tourist markets during the pandemic property boom.

The locations were found to have a high risk of dramatic falls in prices based on analysis by the DSR Data, which reviewed every suburb in Australia on 17 different measures of supply and demand.

The locations were then scored out of 100, with anything below 30 considered a no-go zone.

Mr Sheppard cautioned that there would likely be other suburbs that should be on the list, but they were excluded to holes in available data.